From Alt to Real Politik

How AAP and Kejriwal merged an earlier idealism within the real demands of political survival

- Puneet Nicholas Yadav

On November 24, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will complete seven years of turbulent political existence. In a political landscape that has a 134-year-old Congress staring at an existential crisis and a BJP celebrating its near total dominance over the Union, it may seem a trifle unfair to assess AAP’s brief history.

But then, AAP’s trajectory as a party and Kejriwal as its leader from that winter day of 2012 when they emerged out of Anna Hazare’s Jan Lokpal movement, promising an alternative politics that would cleanse the system, is fascinating.

AAP was branded by many as an anarchist outfit with little future. Within a year, it made a surprise electoral debut in the 2013 Delhi assembly polls, winning 28 seats. Within 49 days, Kejriwal sacrificed the hardearned victory; only to return to power in early 2015 with a clean sweep (67 out of 70 seats). Now, a month away from seeking a renewed mandate, do AAP and Kejriwal retain their aura of being harbingers of an “alternative politics”?

The jury is still out, with opinion sharply divided. While Kejriwal has enough admiring supporters, detractors too are in plenty, and they say that Kejriwal’s evolution as a full-time politician has left them disappointed.

“Compared to its original ideals and promises of an alternative politics free of corruption, nepotism, opportunism etc, the AAP today is unrecognisable. The party’s real failure, in fact, is that it has strengthened the belief that there is no space for alternative politics in India,” says political analyst Badri Narayan.